Junebell's Story - A Very Drunk Goblin, and a Terrible Apartment Building

Junebell cuts off the bright commercial strip and heads uphill toward the darker residential blocks. Her bottle swings low at her side, half a crutch, half a prize.

The bars fade behind her. Rain beads on cracked sidewalks, and the city thins into shuttered shops, busted streetlights, and tenements with stained concrete faces.

A rhythmic thudding rolls somewhere far off, muffled by walls and distance. It is not close, but it keeps time with her footsteps anyway.

Junebell tightens her grip on the bottle and keeps moving. A pair of hunched silhouettes passes under a doorway awning ahead, then vanishes into the dark without a word.

She reaches the first block of monster housing, where the windows glow weakly through grime and the stairwells smell like old fry oil and wet stone. Home is not far now.

Then the thudding comes again, closer in feeling if not in distance, and Junebell has to choose whether to take the alley shortcut or stay under the streetlights with her drink in hand.

Junebell keeps to the main road. The streetlights wash the rain into silver bands, and the darker alley mouth stays off to one side, ignored for now.

Her bottle knocks once against her leg. Ahead, the low stairwell of her building comes into view, lit by a weak bulb that buzzes over the entry.

The thudding follows her here, faint but steady, leaking through concrete and brick from somewhere nearby, not gone, just displaced.

At the curb, a wet tire track glints under the streetlight, and the apartment windows above sit shut and yellow behind grime.

Junebell reaches the front steps and slows under the awning, where the rain lessens and the doorway shadow deepens around her.

From somewhere inside the building, a heavy bang answers the distant thudding, close enough now to make the entry feel watched.

Junebell slips through the front door before the buzz of the light can settle on her, one hand braced on the frame as the building swallows her from the rain.

The lobby smells like wet concrete and stale smoke. The banging from deeper inside thumps once, muffled but unmistakable, and the whole hallway seems to hold still around it.

She angles straight for the stairs, shoulders hunched, bottle tucked close, making herself small under the watchful glow of the entry.

A stripped patch on the step catches her foot. Junebell catches herself, but the bottle knocks hard against the railing and clinks loud in the quiet.

Up the landing, her apartment door waits half in shadow, the number plate glinting dully. The sounds inside the building keep moving, but her floor is here now.

At her door, Junebell gets the latch under her hand and eases it open. A sharp creak gives her away to anyone listening, even as she steps into the threshold.

Junebell turns the latch with a soft click, and the apartment door settles shut behind her. The rain noise drops away at once, leaving only the building’s damp hush and the distant thudding somewhere below.

She works the lock with quick, practiced hands. Metal bites into place. The hallway beyond her door becomes somebody else’s problem.

Junebell keeps moving, bottle tucked in close, and pads toward her room through the dim hall. The floor answers under her weight with a tired creak.

Then a hard bang rolls up from deeper in the building, followed by a dragging scrape that seems to climb the walls. It is closer now, and it does not sound like weather.

Her own door sits closed behind her, but the sound keeps traveling, patient and ugly, through the stairwell. Whatever is moving inside the building has not stopped for her.

Junebell reaches the short hallway to her room just as another dull another slam, punches through the dark below, asking whether she heads inside or listens first.

Junebell slips through the short hall and reaches her apartment door. The latch gives under her hand, and the quiet inside waits for her like a held breath.

She nudges the door open just enough to slide in, bottle still tucked close. The hall light cuts a thin line across the threshold, then falls away behind her.

The room beyond is hers, cramped and dim and blessedly still. For one beat, the banging from deeper in the building stays outside the walls of her own space.

But the dragging sound answers again from somewhere below, dull through the floorboards, as if the building itself is warning her not to relax yet.

Junebell gets both feet inside and the door swings nearer shut behind her, sealing off the hall.

Then a fresh thud rolls up through the apartment from below, close enough to rattle the cheap frame and ask whether she locks in, or listens.